Still, after a national reckoning on race put the spotlight on the advertising industry’s media investment in 2020, there have been some improvements. Colossus SSP, which focuses on diverse marketplaces, saw a nearly eight-fold increase in Latinx-targeted private marketplace revenue between the second quarters of 2022 and this year.

Investment still lacking

Many brands looking to reach Hispanic audiences will do a test campaign of around $10,000, which is not enough to see meaningful results, said Iesha White, lead of the impactful investment initiative and associate director of programmatic at performance agency Tinuiti.

Brands that hope their general campaigns will reach Hispanic audiences are often not doing enough to engage these communities, she added. “If you’re not intentionally including, you’re unintentionally excluding,” White said.

Another way brands end up leaving out Hispanic audiences is through supply path optimization efforts, which have become in vogue as advertisers look to transact directly with publishers to avoid the ills of the programmatic supply chain. Brands often pick the largest publishers and sometimes forget about those that serve Hispanic populations, said Mark Walker, CEO of ad-tech firm Direct Digital Holdings, the parent company of Colossus SSP.

“You’re only going to pick the publications you know or your colleagues know,” Walker said of most buyers’ strategy, recommending instead that buyers use the open exchange to find high performing publishers, especially those that serve Hispanic audiences, and then set up private marketplace deals with these websites.

White also advises her clients to use inclusion lists with Hispanic publishers and to monitor what keywords their brand safety partners are blocking. “I’ve seen ‘Hispanic’ in a keyword block list,” she said.

The most critical misstep brands make is only thinking about Hispanic audiences when they’re reminded, and not seeing the segment as a critical part of any media plan, said Karina Dobarro, evp and managing partner of multicultural marketing at Horizon Media.

“I always say it’s a bit of a wave that comes and goes. The census and 2020 and those societal events will lead to an increased interest and dedication toward multicultural and Hispanic marketing,” Dobarro said. “Those tend to plateau a bit.”